Application programmer interface platform with direct data center access

ABSTRACT

An application programming interface (API) platform accesses cloud-based software services in a cloud computing system. API requests used in the API platform include a tenant specific endpoint (TSE) that uses a unique tenant identifier and an API endpoint as a URL domain. The unique tenant identifier identifies a tenant associated with the API request and the API endpoint identifies one of the cloud-based software services. The combination of the unique tenant identifier and the API endpoint in the domain of the TSE maps to an IP address for a specific software service in a specific one of the data centers in the cloud computing system assigned to the tenant. This allows API requests to be routed directly to the tenant specific data centers without first being routed through a central routing service.

COPYRIGHT NOTICE

A portion of the disclosure of this patent document contains material which is subject to copyright protection. The copyright owner has no objection to the facsimile reproduction by anyone of the patent document or the patent disclosure, as it appears in the United States Patent and Trademark Office patent file or records, but otherwise reserves all copyright rights whatsoever.

TECHNICAL FIELD

One or more implementations relate generally to database systems, and in particular to an application programmer interface (API) platform with direct data center access.

BACKGROUND

A cloud-based database system may operate multiple data centers in different physical locations that store data and provide software services for different accounts or “tenants”. Client software applications use application programming interfaces (APIs) to access the cloud-based software services on behalf of the tenants.

The client applications may send API requests to a central routing service, such as a content delivery network (CDN) or edge gateway. The central routing service decrypts, parses, and buffers the API requests for routing information. For example, the central routing service parses a hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) header to discover which data center in the cloud computing system is associated with the API request. The central routing service then routes the API request to the identified data center. The identified data center then processes the redirected API request from the routing service after successful authentication.

Centralized routing services create a single point of failure that reduces the reliability of the cloud-based API service. Overall scalability is also limited since all API requests are processed at a same central location and all API authentication credentials need to be replicated at each data center.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

The included drawings are for illustrative purposes and serve to provide examples of possible structures and operations for the disclosed inventive systems, apparatus, methods and computer-readable storage media. These drawings in no way limit any changes in form and detail that may be made by one skilled in the art without departing from the spirit and scope of the disclosed implementations.

FIG. 1A shows a block diagram of an example environment in which an on-demand database service can be used according to some implementations.

FIG. 1B shows a block diagram of example implementations of elements of FIG. 1A and example interconnections between these elements according to some implementations.

FIG. 2A shows a system diagram of example architectural components of an on-demand database service environment according to some implementations.

FIG. 2B shows a system diagram further illustrating example architectural components of an on-demand database service environment according to some implementations.

FIG. 3 shows an example tenant specific API platform.

FIG. 4 shows an example API request with a tenant specific endpoint.

FIG. 5 shows example API request routed through a central routing service.

FIG. 6 shows an example of how tenant specific API requests are processed by a client application.

FIG. 7 shows an example of how tenant specific API requests are processed by a tenant specific data center.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

Examples of systems, apparatus, computer-readable storage media, and methods according to the disclosed implementations are described in this section. These examples are being provided solely to add context and aid in the understanding of the disclosed implementations. It will thus be apparent to one skilled in the art that the disclosed implementations may be practiced without some or all of the specific details provided. In other instances, certain process or method operations, also referred to herein as “blocks,” have not been described in detail in order to avoid unnecessarily obscuring of the disclosed implementations. Other implementations and applications are also possible, and as such, the following examples should not be taken as definitive or limiting either in scope or setting.

In the following detailed description, references are made to the accompanying drawings, which form a part of the description and in which are shown, by way of illustration, specific implementations. Although these disclosed implementations are described in sufficient detail to enable one skilled in the art to practice the implementations, it is to be understood that these examples are not limiting, such that other implementations may be used and changes may be made to the disclosed implementations without departing from their spirit and scope. For example, the blocks of the methods shown and described herein are not necessarily performed in the order indicated in some other implementations. Additionally, in some other implementations, the disclosed methods include more or fewer blocks than are described. As another example, some blocks described herein as separate blocks may be combined in some other implementations. Conversely, what may be described herein as a single block may be implemented in multiple blocks in some other implementations. Additionally, the conjunction “or” is intended herein in the inclusive sense where appropriate unless otherwise indicated; that is, the phrase “A, B or C” is intended to include the possibilities of “A,” “B,” “C,” “A and B,” “B and C,” “A and C” and “A, B and C.”

Example embodiments of the present disclosure may be described in terms of a multitenant and/or cloud computing architecture or platform. Cloud computing refers to a paradigm for enabling network access to a scalable and elastic pool of shareable computing resources with self-service provisioning and administration on-demand and without active management by users. Computing resources (or simply “resources”) are any physical or virtual component, or usage of such components, of limited availability within a computer system or network. Examples of resources include usage/access to, for a period of time, servers, processor(s), storage equipment, memory devices, memory areas, networks, electrical power, input/output (peripheral) devices, mechanical devices, network connections (e.g., channels/links, ports, network sockets, etc.), operating systems, virtual machines (VMs), software/applications, computer files, and/or the like. Cloud computing provides cloud computing services (or cloud services), which are one or more capabilities offered via cloud computing that are invoked using a defined interface (e.g., an API or the like). Multi-tenancy is a feature of cloud computing where physical or virtual resources are allocated in such a way that multiple tenants and their computations and data are isolated from and inaccessible to one another. As used herein, the term “tenant” refers to a group of users (e.g., cloud service users) who share common access with specific privileges to a software instance and/or a set of computing resources. Tenants may be individuals, organizations, or enterprises that are customers or users of a cloud computing service or platform. However, a given cloud service customer organization could have many different tenancies with a single cloud service provider representing different groups within the organization. A multi-tenant platform or architecture, such as those discussed herein, may provide a tenant with a dedicated share of a software instance typically including one or more of tenant specific data, user management, tenant-specific functionality, configuration, customizations, non-functional properties, associated applications, etc. Multi-tenancy contrasts with multi-instance architectures, where separate software instances operate on behalf of different tenants.

In some implementations, the users described herein are users (or “members”) of an interactive online “enterprise social network,” also referred to herein as an “enterprise social networking system,” an “enterprise collaborative network,” or more simply as an “enterprise network.” Such online enterprise networks are increasingly becoming a common way to facilitate communication among people, any of whom can be recognized as enterprise users. One example of an online enterprise social network is Chatter®, provided by salesforce.com, Inc. of San Francisco, Calif. salesforce.com, Inc. is a provider of enterprise social networking services, customer relationship management (CRM) services and other database management services, any of which can be accessed and used in conjunction with the techniques disclosed herein in some implementations. These various services can be provided in a cloud computing environment as described herein, for example, in the context of a multi-tenant database system. Some of the described techniques or processes can be implemented without having to install software locally, that is, on computing devices of users interacting with services available through the cloud. While the disclosed implementations may be described with reference to Chatter® and more generally to enterprise social networking, those of ordinary skill in the art should understand that the disclosed techniques are neither limited to Chatter® nor to any other services and systems provided by salesforce.com, Inc. and can be implemented in the context of various other database systems such as cloud-based systems that are not part of a multi-tenant database system or which do not provide enterprise social networking services.

I. EXAMPLE SYSTEM OVERVIEW

FIG. 1A shows an example of an environment 10 in which on-demand services (e.g., cloud computing services and/or database services) can be used in accordance with various embodiments. The environment 10 includes user systems 12, a network 14, and system 16 (also referred to herein as a “cloud-based system,” “database system,” “cloud computing service,” or the like). The cloud system 16 includes a processor system 17, an application platform 18, a network interface 20, tenant database (DB) 22 for storing tenant data 23 (see FIG. 1B), system DB 24 for storing system data 25 (see FIG. 1B), program code 26 for implementing various functions of the system 16, and process space 28 for executing DB system processes and tenant-specific processes, such as running applications as part of an application hosting service. In some other implementations, environment 10 may not have all of these components or systems, or may have other components or systems instead of, or in addition to, those listed above.

The system 16 may be a DB system and/or a cloud computing service comprising a network or other interconnection of computing systems (e.g., servers, storage devices, applications, etc., such as those discussed with regard to FIGS. 1A-1B infra) that provides access to a pool of physical and/or virtual resources. In some implementations, the system 16 is a multi-tenant DB system and/or a multi-tenant cloud computing platform. In some implementations, the system 16 provides a Communications as a Service (CaaS), Compute as a Service (CompaaS), Database as a Service (DaaS), Data Storage as a Service (DSaaS), Firewall as a Service (FaaS), Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Network as a Service (NaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), Security as a Service, Software as a Service (SaaS), and/or other like cloud services.

In some implementations, the environment 10 is an environment in which an on-demand DB service exists. An on-demand DB service, such as that which can be implemented using the system 16, is a service that is made available to users outside of the enterprise(s) that own, maintain or provide access to the system 16. As described above, such users generally do not need to be concerned with building or maintaining the system 16. Instead, resources provided by the system 16 may be available for such users' use when the users need services provided by the system 16; that is, on the demand of the users. Some on-demand DB services can store information from one or more tenants into tables of a common DB image to form a multi-tenant DB system (MTS). The term “multi-tenant DB system” can refer to those systems in which various elements of hardware and software of a DB system may be shared by one or more customers or tenants. For example, a given application server may simultaneously process requests for a great number of customers, and a given DB table may store rows of data such as feed items for a potentially much greater number of customers. A DB image can include one or more DB objects. A relational DB management system (RDBMS) or the equivalent can execute storage and retrieval of information against the DB object(s).

Application platform 18 can be a framework that allows the applications of system 16 to execute, such as the hardware or software infrastructure of the system 16. In some implementations, the application platform 18 enables the creation, management and execution of one or more applications developed by the provider of the on-demand DB service, users accessing the on-demand DB service via user systems 12, or third-party application developers accessing the on-demand DB service via user systems 12.

In some implementations, the system 16 implements a web-based customer relationship management (CRM) system. For example, in some such implementations, the system 16 includes application servers configured to implement and execute CRM software applications as well as provide related data, code, forms, renderable web pages and documents and other information to and from user systems 12 and to store to, and retrieve from, a DB system related data, objects, and web page content. In some MTS implementations, data for multiple tenants may be stored in the same physical DB object in tenant DB 22. In some such implementations, tenant data is arranged in the storage medium(s) of tenant DB 22 so that data of one tenant is kept logically separate from that of other tenants so that one tenant does not have access to another tenant's data, unless such data is expressly shared. The system 16 also implements applications other than, or in addition to, a CRM application. For example, the system 16 can provide tenant access to multiple hosted (standard and custom) applications, including a CRM application. User (or third-party developer) applications, which may or may not include CRM, may be supported by the application platform 18. The application platform 18 manages the creation and storage of the applications into one or more DB objects and the execution of the applications in one or more virtual machines in the process space of the system 16. The applications of the application platform 18 may be developed with any suitable programming languages and/or development tools, such as those discussed herein. The applications may be built using a platform-specific and/or proprietary development tool and/or programming languages, such as those discussed herein.

In embodiments, the tenant data storage 22, the system data storage 24, and/or some other data store (not shown) include Extract-Load-Transform (ELT) data or Extract-Transform-Load (ETL) data, which may be raw data extracted from various sources and normalized (e.g., indexed, partitioned, augmented, canonicalized, etc.) for analysis and other transformations. In some embodiments, the raw data may be loaded into the tenant data storage 22, the system data storage 24, and/or some other data store (not shown) and stored as key-value pairs, which may allow the data to be stored in a mostly native form without requiring substantial normalization or formatting.

According to some implementations, each system 16 is configured to provide web pages, forms, applications, data and media content to user (client) systems 12 to support the access by user systems 12 as tenants of system 16. As such, system 16 provides security mechanisms to keep each tenant's data separate unless the data is shared. If more than one MTS is used, they may be located in close proximity to one another (e.g., in a server farm located in a single building or campus), or they may be distributed at locations remote from one another (e.g., one or more servers located in city A and one or more servers located in city B). As used herein, each MTS could include one or more logically or physically connected servers distributed locally or across one or more geographic locations. Additionally, the term “server” is meant to refer to a computing device or system, including processing hardware and process space(s), an associated storage medium such as a memory device or DB, and, in some instances, a DB application (e.g., OODBMS or RDBMS) as is well known in the art. It should also be understood that “server system” and “server” are often used interchangeably herein. Similarly, the DB objects (DBOs) described herein can be implemented as part of a single DB, a distributed DB, a collection of distributed DBs, a DB with redundant online or offline backups or other redundancies, etc., and can include a distributed DB or storage network and associated processing intelligence.

The network 14 can be or include any network or combination of networks of systems or devices that communicate with one another. For example, the network 14 can be or include any one or any combination of a local area network (LAN), a wireless LAN (WLAN), wide area network (WAN), telephone network, wireless network, cellular network, point-to-point network, star network, token ring network, hub network, or other appropriate configuration including proprietary and/or enterprise networks, or combinations thereof. The network 14 can include a Transfer Control Protocol and Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) network, such as the global internetwork of networks often referred to as the “Internet” (with a capital “I”). The Internet will be used in many of the examples herein. However, it should be understood that the networks that the disclosed implementations can use are not so limited, although TCP/IP is a frequently implemented protocol. The network 14 may comprise one or more network elements, each of which may include one or more processors, communications systems (e.g., including network interface controllers, one or more transmitters/receivers connected to one or more antennas, etc.), and computer readable media. Examples of such network elements may include wireless APs (WAPs), a home/business server (with or without radio frequency (RF) communications circuitry), routers, switches, hubs, radio beacons, (macro or small-cell) base stations, servers (e.g., stand-alone, rack-mounted, blade, etc.), and/or any other like devices/systems. Connection to the network 14 may be via a wired or a wireless connection using one or more of the various communication protocols discussed infra. As used herein, a wired or wireless communication protocol may refer to a set of standardized rules or instructions implemented by a communication device/system to communicate with other devices, including instructions for packetizing/depacketizing data, modulating/demodulating signals, implementation of protocols stacks, and the like. Connection to the network 14 may require that the various devices and network elements execute software routines which enable, for example, the seven layers of the open systems interconnection (OSI) model of computer networking or equivalent in a wireless network.

The user systems 12 can communicate with system 16 using TCP/IP and, at a higher network level, other common Internet protocols to communicate, such as Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), File Transfer Protocol (FTP), Andrew File System (AFS), Wireless Application Protocol (WAP), Internet Protocol (IP), Internet Protocol Security (IPsec), Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) with Real-Time Transport Protocol (RTP or Secure RTP (SRTP), Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP), User Datagram Protocol (UDP), QUIC (sometimes referred to as “Quick UDP Internet Connections”), Stream Control Transmission Protocol (SCTP), Web-based secure shell (SSH), Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP), WebSocket protocol, Internet Group Management Protocol (IGMP), Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP), etc. In an example where HTTP is used, each user system 12 can include an HTTP client commonly referred to as a “web browser” or simply a “browser” for sending and receiving HTTP signals to and from an HTTP server (also referred to as a “web server”) of the system 16. In this example, each user system 12 may send and receive HTTP messages where a header of each message includes various operating parameters and the body of the such messages may include code or source code documents (e.g., HTML, XML, JSON, Apex®, CSS, JSP, MessagePack™, Apache® Thrift™, ASN.1, Google® Protocol Buffers (protobuf), DBOs, or some other like object(s)/document(s)). Such an HTTP server can be implemented as the sole network interface 20 between the system 16 and the network 14, but other techniques can be used in addition to or instead of these techniques. In some implementations, the network interface 20 between the system 16 and the network 14 includes load sharing functionality, such as round-robin HTTP request distributors to balance loads and distribute incoming HTTP requests evenly over a number of servers. In MTS implementations, each of the servers can have access to the MTS data; however, other alternative configurations may be used instead.

The user systems 12 can be implemented as any computing device(s) or other data processing apparatus or systems usable by users to access the DB system 16. For example, any of user systems 12 can be a desktop computer, a work station, a laptop computer, a tablet computer, a handheld computing device (e.g., Personal Data Assistants (PDAs), pagers, portable media player, etc.), a mobile cellular phone (e.g., a “smartphone”), or any other WiFi-enabled device, WAP-enabled device, or other computing device capable of interfacing directly or indirectly to the Internet or other network (e.g., network 14). The terms “user system”, “computing device”, “computer system”, or the like may be used interchangeably herein with one another and with the term “computer.”

As described above, each user system 12 typically executes an HTTP client, for example, a web browsing (or simply “browsing”) program, such as a web browser based on the WebKit platform, Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser, Apple's Safari, Google's Chrome, Opera's browser, or Mozilla's Firefox browser, and/or the like, to execute and render web applications allowing a user (e.g., a subscriber of on-demand services provided by the system 16) of the user system 12 to access, process and view information, pages, interfaces (e.g., UI 30 in FIG. 1B), and applications (e.g., application(s) 12 y in FIG. 1B) available to it from the system 16 over the network 14. In other implementations, each user system 12 may operate a web or user application (e.g., application 12 y in FIG. 1B) designed to interact with applications of the application platform 18 allowing a user (e.g., a subscriber of on-demand services provided by the system 16) of the user system 12 to access, process and view information, pages, interfaces (e.g., UI 30 in FIG. 1B), and applications available to it from the system 16 over the network 14. In some cases, an owner/operator of DB system 16 may have pre-built the web or user applications for use by clients, customers, and/or agents of a tenant organization (org) to access a tenant space or enterprise social network of that tenant org. In some cases, developers associated with a tenant org may build custom application(s) for interacting with the tenant data. The user (or third party) application(s) may be native application(s) (e.g., executed and rendered in an application container) or hybrid application(s) (e.g., web applications being executed/rendered in an application container or skeleton). The user (or third party) application(s) may be platform-specific, or developed to operate on a particular type of user system 12 or a particular (hardware and/or software) configuration of a user system 12. The term “platform-specific” may refer to the platform implemented by the user system 12, the platform implemented by the DB system 16, and/or a platform of a third-party system/platform. The web, user, or third-party application(s) 12 y discussed herein may be a software, program code, logic modules, application packages, etc. that are built using one or more programming languages and/or development tools, such as those discussed herein. Furthermore, such applications may utilize a suitable querying language to query and store information in an associated tenant space, such as, for example, the various query languages discussed herein or the like.

In an example, the user systems 12 may implement web, user, or third-party applications 12 y to request and obtain data from DB system 16, and render graphical user interfaces (GUIs) in an application container or browser. These GUIs may correspond with GUI 12 v and/or UI 30 shown and described with respect to FIG. 1B. In some implementations, the GUIs may include a data analytics GUI, such as Salesforce® Wave™ dashboard, which may provide visual representations of data (also referred to as visual representations 12 v or the like) residing in an enterprise cloud or in an on-demand services environment (e.g., a tenant space within DB system 16). The GUIs may include one or more components (e.g., graphical control elements (GCEs), tabs, reports, dashboards, widgets, pages, etc.). Examples of such components may include audio/video calling components, messaging components (e.g., chat, instant messaging, short message service (SMS)/multimedia messaging service (MMS) messaging, emailing, etc.), and visualization components. The visualization components may enable a user of a user system 12 to select visualization parameters (also referred to as “lens parameters” or “filters”) for displaying data from one or more datasets. A dataset may be a specific view or transformation of data from one or more data sources (e.g., a tenant space of DB 22, etc.). The visualization parameters may include, for example, a selection of data or data type to display from one or more datasets; a particular graph, chart, or map in which to view the selected data; color schemes for the graphs/charts/maps; a position or orientation of the graphs/charts/maps within a particular GUI, etc. The graphs/charts/maps to be displayed may be referred to as a “lens” or a “dashboard”. A lens may be a particular view of data from one or more datasets, and a dashboard may be a collection of lenses. In some implementations, a GUI may display lenses, dashboards, and/or control panels to alter or rearrange the lenses/dashboards. Furthermore, the various application(s) discussed herein may also enable the user system 12 to provide authentication credentials (e.g., user identifier (user id), password, personal identification number (PIN), digital certificates, etc.) to the DB system 16 so that the DB system 16 may authenticate the identity of a user of the user system 12.

Each user system 12 typically includes an operating system (OS) 12 x to manage computer hardware and software resources, and provide common services for various applications 12 y. The OS 12 x includes one or more drivers and/or APIs that provide an interface to hardware devices thereby enabling the OS 12 x and applications to access hardware functions. The OS 12 x includes middleware that connects two or more separate applications or connects applications 12 y with underlying hardware components beyond those available from the drivers/APIs of the OS 12 x. The OS 12 x may be a general purpose OS or a platform-specific OS specifically written for and tailored to the user system 12.

Each user system 12 also typically includes one or more user input devices, such as a keyboard, a mouse, a trackball, a touch pad, a touch screen, a pen or stylus or the like, for interacting with a GUI provided by the browser/application container on a display (e.g., a monitor screen, liquid crystal display (LCD), light-emitting diode (LED) display, among other possibilities) of the user system 12 in conjunction with pages, forms, applications and other information provided by the system 16 or other systems or servers. For example, the user interface device can be used to access data and applications hosted by system 16, and to perform searches on stored data, and otherwise allow a user to interact with various GUI pages that may be presented to a user. As discussed above, implementations are suitable for use with the Internet, although other networks can be used instead of or in addition to the Internet, such as an intranet, an extranet, a virtual private network (VPN), a non-TCP/IP based network, any LAN or WAN or the like.

The users of user systems 12 may differ in their respective capacities, and the capacity of a particular user system 12 can be entirely determined by permissions (permission levels) for the current user of such user system. For example, where a salesperson is using a particular user system 12 to interact with the system 16, that user system can have the capacities allotted to the salesperson. However, while an administrator is using that user system 12 to interact with the system 16, that user system can have the capacities allotted to that administrator. Where a hierarchical role model is used, users at one permission level can have access to applications, data, and DB information accessible by a lower permission level user, but may not have access to certain applications, DB information, and data accessible by a user at a higher permission level. Thus, different users generally will have different capabilities with regard to accessing and modifying application and DB information, depending on the users' respective security or permission levels (also referred to as “authorizations”).

According to some implementations, each user system 12 and some or all of its components are operator-configurable using applications, such as a browser, including computer code executed using one or more central processing units (CPUs) and/or other like computer processing devices (see e.g., processor system 12B of FIG. 1B). Similarly, the system 16 (and additional instances of an MTS, where more than one is present) and all of its components can be operator-configurable using application(s) including computer code to run using the processor system 17, which may include one or more CPUs/processors. Examples of the processors/CPUs of processor system 17 may include one or multiple Intel Pentium® or Xeon® processors, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) Zen® Core Architecture processor(s), such as Ryzen® or Epyc® processor(s), Accelerated Processing Units (APUs), MxGPUs, or the like; ARM-based processor(s) licensed from ARM Holdings, Ltd. such as the ARM Cortex-A family of processors and the ThunderX2® provided by Cavium™, Inc.; Centrig™ processor(s) from Qualcomm® Technologies, Inc.; Power Architecture processor(s) provided by the OpenPOWER® Foundation and/or IBM®; GeForce®, Tegra®, Titan X®, Tesla®, Shield®, and/or other like GPUs provided by Nvidia®; a MIPS-based design from MIPS Technologies, Inc. such as MIPS Warrior P-class processors; and/or the like, or the like.

The system 16 includes tangible computer-readable media having non-transitory instructions stored thereon/in that are executable by or used to program a server (e.g., the app servers 100 or other servers discussed herein) or other computing system (or collection of such servers or computing systems) to perform some of the implementation of processes described herein. For example, computer program code 26 can implement instructions for operating and configuring the system 16 to intercommunicate and to process web pages, applications and other data and media content as described herein. In some implementations, the computer code 26 can be downloadable and stored on a hard disk, but the entire program code, or portions thereof, also can be stored in any other volatile or non-volatile memory medium or device as is well known, such as a ROM or RAM, or provided on any media capable of storing program code, such as any type of rotating media including floppy disks, optical discs, digital versatile disks (DVD), compact disks (CD), microdrives, and magneto-optical disks, and magnetic or optical cards, nanosystems (including molecular memory ICs), or any other type of computer-readable medium or device suitable for storing instructions or data. Additionally, the entire program code, or portions thereof, may be transmitted and downloaded from a software source over a transmission medium, for example, over the Internet, or from another server, as is well known, or transmitted over any other existing network connection as is well known (e.g., extranet, VPN, LAN, etc.) using any communication medium and protocols (e.g., TCP/IP, HTTP, HTTPS, Ethernet, etc.) as are well known. It will also be appreciated that computer code for the disclosed implementations can be realized in any programming language that can be executed on a server or other computing system such as, for example, C, C++, HTML, any other markup language, Java™, JavaScript, ActiveX, any other scripting language, such as VBScript, and many other programming languages as are well known may be used. (Java™ is a trademark of Sun Microsystems, Inc.).

FIG. 1B shows example implementations of elements of FIG. 1A and example interconnections between these elements according to some implementations. That is, FIG. 1B also illustrates environment 10, but FIG. 1B shows various elements of the system 16 and various interconnections between such elements are shown with more specificity according to some more specific implementations. Additionally, in FIG. 1B, the user system 12 includes a processor system 12A, a memory system 12B, an input system 12C, an output system 12D, and a communications system 12E. In other implementations, the environment 10 may not have the same elements as those shown by FIG. 1B or may have other elements instead of, or in addition to, those listed.

In FIG. 1B, the network interface 20 and/or processor system 17 is/are implemented as a set of application servers 1001-100N. Each application server 100 (also referred to herein as an “app server”, an “API server”, an “HTTP application server,” a “worker node”, and/or the like) is configured to communicate with tenant DB 22 and the tenant data 23 therein, as well as system DB 24 and the system data 25 therein, to serve requests received from the user systems 12. The tenant data 23 can be divided into individual tenant storage spaces 112, which can be physically or logically arranged or divided. Within each tenant storage space 112, user storage 114 and application metadata 116 can similarly be allocated for each user. For example, a copy of a user's most recently used (MRU) items can be stored to user storage 114. Similarly, a copy of MRU items for an entire organization that is a tenant can be stored to tenant storage space 112.

The process space 28 includes system process space 102, individual tenant process spaces 104 and a tenant management process space 110. In various embodiments, the process space 28 includes one or more query processors 103, one or more stream processors 105, and one or more firewall processors 106. The stream processor(s) 105 and judgment processor(s) 106 may be implemented as software components (e.g., software engines, software agents, artificial intelligence (AI) agents, modules, objects, or other like logical units), as individual hardware elements, or a combination thereof. In an example software-based implementation, the stream processor(s) 105 and judgment processor(s) 106 may be developed using a suitable programming language, development tools/environments, etc., which are executed by one or more processors of one or more computing systems (see e.g., processor system 17 of FIG. 1A). In this example, program code of the stream processor(s) 105 and judgment processor(s) 106 may be executed by a single processor or by multiple processing devices. In an example hardware-based implementation, the stream processor(s) 105 and judgment processor(s) 106 are implemented by respective hardware elements, such as GPUs (or floating point units within one or more GPUs), hardware accelerators (e.g., FPGAs, ASICs, DSPs, SoCs, etc.) that are configured with appropriate logic blocks, bit stream(s), etc. to perform their respective functions, AI accelerating co-processor(s), tensor processing units (TPUs), and/or the like.

The stream processor(s) 105 are systems and/or applications that send or receive data streams and execute the applications or analytics logic in response to detecting events or triggers from the data streams. The stream processor(s) 105 process data directly as it is produced or received and detect conditions from the data streams within a relatively small time period (e.g., measured in terms of milliseconds to minutes). The stream processor(s) 105 may be implemented using any stream/event processing engines or stream analytics engines such as, for example, Apache® Kafka®, Apache® Storm®, Apache® Flink®, Apache® Apex®, Apache® Spark®, IBM® Spade, Nvidia® CUDA™, Intel® Ct™, Ampa™ provided by Software AGO, StreamC™ from Stream Processors, Inc., and/or the like. According to various embodiments, the stream processor(s) 105 provide a Change Data Capture (CDC) services, wherein the stream processor(s) 105 include a set of design patterns that determine and track data changes in the DB 22, and indicate those changes to an MDM system (e.g., MDM system 304 of FIG. 3). Any of the aforementioned streaming technologies may be used to provide the CDC services, and additional or alternative implementations that may be used include griddable.io provided by salesforce.com®; LinkedIn® Databus, Equalum® real-time streaming or “data beaming”, Debezium CDC platform, Oracle® GoldenGate, or the like. As discussed in more detail infra, the changes/updates may be indicated to the MDM service in the form of judgments as generated by the judgment processor(s) 106.

The judgment processor(s) 106 are systems and/or applications that convert data entities (e.g., field values of one or more records) into a logical judgments. These judgments are then streamed or otherwise sent to an MDM system (e.g., MDM system 304 of FIG. 3) to provide MDM services. Additionally, the judgment processor(s) 106 may convert judgments obtained from the MDM system into suitable transactions or query language statements for execution by the query engine(s) 103. As examples, the judgment processor(s) 106 may use a suitable mapping data structure, data transform, translator, etc. to convert data entities into judgments, and convert judgments into transactions. In some embodiments, the judgment processor(s) 106 may control or enforce the order in which transactions are processed, which may be based on an MDM consistent state as discussed in more detail infra. Alternatively, the query engine(s) 103 may be used to enforce the MDM consistent state.

The application platform 18 includes an application setup mechanism (ASM) 38 that supports application developers' (“app developers”) creation and management of applications. Such applications and others can be saved as metadata into tenant DB 22 by save routines 36 for execution by subscribers as one or more tenant process spaces 104 managed by tenant management process 110, for example. Invocations to such applications can be coded using Procedural Language (PL)/Salesforce® Object Query Language (SOQL) 34, which provides a programming language style interface extension to Application Programming Interface (API) 32. A detailed description of some PL/SOQL language implementations is discussed in commonly assigned U.S. Pat. No. 7,730,478, titled METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR ALLOWING ACCESS TO DEVELOPED APPLICATIONS VIA A MULTI-TENANT ON-DEMAND DATABASE SERVICE, by Craig Weissman, issued on Jun. 1, 2010, and hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety and for all purposes. Invocations to applications can be detected by one or more system processes, which manage retrieving application metadata 116 for the subscriber making the invocation and executing the metadata as an application in a virtual machine.

In some implementations, the application platform 18 also includes policies 35. The policies 35 comprise documents and/or data structures that define a set of rules that govern the behavior of the various subsystems of the app server 100. For example, one or more of the policies 35 may dictate how to handle network traffic for specific network addresses (or address ranges), protocols, services, applications, content types, etc., based on an organization's information security (infosec) policies, regulatory and/or auditing policies, access control lists (ACLs), and the like. Additionally, the policies 35 can specify (within various levels of granularity) particular users, and user groups, that are authorized to access particular resources or types of resources, based on the org's hierarchical structure, and security and regulatory requirements. The documents or data structures of the policies 35 may include a “description,” which is a collection of software modules, program code, logic blocks, parameters, rules, conditions, etc., that may be used by the app server 100 to control the operation of the app server 100 and/or access to various services. Any suitable programming languages, markup languages, schema languages, etc., may be used to define individual policies 35 and instantiate instances of those policies 35. As examples, the policies 35 may be defined using XML, JSON, markdown, IFTTT (“If This Then That”), PADS markup language (PADS/ML), Nettle, Capirca™, and/or some other suitable data format, such as those discussed herein.

The application platform 18 may be, or may include, a development environment, programming language(s), and/or tools (collectively referred to as a “development environment”, “dev-environment” and the like) that allows app developers to create/edit applications for implementing the various embodiments discussed herein. As examples, the dev-environment may be or include a software development environment (SDE), an integrated development environment (IDE), a software development kit (SDK), a software development platform (SDP), a schema builder, a modeling language application, a source code editor, build automation tools, debugger, compiler, interpreter, and/or some other like platform, framework, tools, etc. that may assist an app developer in building applications, configurations, definitions, and/or the like. In some implementations, the dev-environment may be a standalone application, or may be a web-based or cloud-based environment (e.g., a native application, a web application, or a hybrid application including GUIs that render an SDE/IDE/SDK/SDP implemented by a backend service (e.g., DB system 16, a cloud service provider, etc.) in a web browser or application container).

The system 16 of FIG. 1B also includes a user interface (UI) 30 and an API 32 (also referred to as a “web service”) to system 16 resident processes, which allow users or developers at user systems 12 to access the resident processes. In some implementations, application (app) code, app/service templates, and/or policies 35 developed by tenants may be pushed or otherwise sent to the system 16 using API 32. In these implementations, the app code, app/service templates, and/or policies 35 may be developed using a development (dev) environment, programming language(s), and/or dev-tools provided by the system 16. The API 32 may be implemented as a remote API or a web API, such as a Representational State Transfer (REST or RESTful) API, Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) API, salesforce.com Apex API, and/or some other like API. The API 32 may be implemented as a web service including, for example, Apache® Axi2.4 or Axi3, Apache® CXF, JSON-Remote Procedure Call (RPC), JSON-Web Service Protocol (WSP), Web Services Description Language (WSDL), XML Interface for Network Services (XINS), Web Services Conversation Language (WSCL), Web Services Flow Language (WSFL), RESTful web services, and/or the like.

In some implementations, the API 32 may include one or more public APIs and one or more private APIs. The public APIs are APIs that includes one or more publically exposed endpoints that allows user systems 12 to access tenant data. These endpoints specify where resources are located and/or how particular web services can be accessed. The application 12 y may be used to generate and transmit a message (e.g., an HTTP message) with a user-issued query and a suitable URI/URL to access of an endpoint of the system 16. In embodiments, one or more of the public APIs may be an asynchronous (“async”) query API, where the user-issued query includes an API call or other like instruction indicating that a user-issued query should be treated as an aysnc query (referred to as an “async query verb”). The async query verbs to invoke the async query API may be defined by API 32 and can be coded using PL/SOQL 34 or some other suitable programming or query language. When an async query invokes the async query API, an async query engine (e.g., query engine 103) or async query scheduler may generate a corresponding async query job. The term “job” as used herein refers to a unit of work or execution that performs work that comprises one or more tasks. Individual jobs may have a corresponding job entity comprising a record or DB object that stores various values, statistics, metadata, etc. during the lifecycle of the job or until the job is executed, which are placed in a schedule or queue and executed from the queue, in turn. An async query job entity corresponding to an async query job is a job entity existing for the during the lifecycle of an async query, which is placed in a schedule or queue and executed by the async query engine, in turn. The async public API may be implemented as a REST or RESTful API, SOAP API, Apex API, and/or some other like API, such as those discussed herein.

Private APIs are APIs 32 that are private or internal to the system 16, which allows system applications (e.g., tenant management process 110, system process 102, query engine 103, stream processor(s) 105, and judgment processor(s) 106 to access other system applications. The private APIs 32 may be similar to the public APIs 32 except that the endpoints of the private APIs 32 are not publically available or accessible. The private APIs 32 may be made less discoverable by restricting users, devices, and/or applications from calling or otherwise using the private APIs 32. For example, use of the private APIs 32 may be restricted to machines inside a private network (or an enterprise network), a range of acceptable IP addresses, applications with IDs included in a whitelist or subscriber list, requests/calls that include a particular digital certificate or other like credentials, and/or the like. The private APIs may be implemented as a REST or RESTful API, SOAP API, Apex API, a proprietary API, and/or some other like API.

Each application server 100 can be communicably coupled with tenant DB 22 and system DB 24, for example, having access to tenant data 23 and system data 25, respectively, via a different network connection 15. For example, one application server 1001 can be coupled via the network 14 (e.g., the Internet), another application server 100N-1 can be coupled via a direct network link 15, and another application server 100N can be coupled by yet a different network connection 15. Transfer Control Protocol and Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) are examples of typical protocols that can be used for communicating between application servers 100 and the system 16. However, it will be apparent to one skilled in the art that other transport protocols can be used to optimize the system 16 depending on the network interconnections used. The application servers 100 may access the tenant data 23 and/or the system data 25 using suitable private APIs as discussed previously.

In some implementations, each application server 100 is configured to handle requests for any user associated with any organization that is a tenant of the system 16. In this regard, each application server 100 may be configured to perform various DB functions (e.g., indexing, querying, etc.) as well as formatting obtained data (e.g., ELT data, ETL data, etc.) for various user interfaces to be rendered by the user systems 12. Because it can be desirable to be able to add and remove application servers 100 from the server pool at any time and for various reasons, in some implementations there is no server affinity for a user or organization to a specific application server 100. In some such implementations, an interface system implementing a load balancing function (e.g., an F5 Big-IP load balancer) is communicably coupled between the application servers 100 and the user systems 12 to distribute requests to the application servers 100. In one implementation, the load balancer uses a least-connections algorithm to route user requests to the application servers 100 (see e.g., load balancer 228 of FIGS. 2A-2B discussed infra). Other examples of load balancing algorithms, such as round robin and observed-response-time, also can be used. For example, in some instances, three consecutive requests from the same user could hit three different application servers 100, and three requests from different users could hit the same application server 100. In this manner, by way of example, system 16 can be a multi-tenant system in which system 16 handles storage of, and access to, different objects, data and applications across disparate users and organizations.

In one example storage use case, one tenant can be an organization (org) that employs a sales force where each salesperson uses system 16 to manage aspects of their sales. A user can maintain contact data, leads data, customer follow-up data, performance data, goals and progress data, etc., all applicable to that user's personal sales process (e.g., in tenant DB 22). In an example of a MTS arrangement, because all of the data and the applications to access, view, modify, report, transmit, calculate, etc., can be maintained and accessed by a user system 12 having little more than network access, the user can manage his or her sales efforts and cycles from any of many different user systems. For example, when a salesperson is visiting a customer and the customer has Internet access in their lobby, the salesperson can obtain critical updates regarding that customer while waiting for the customer to arrive in the lobby.

While each user's data can be stored separately from other users' data regardless of the employers of each user, some data can be organization-wide data shared or accessible by several users or all of the users for a given organization that is a tenant. Thus, there can be some data structures managed by system 16 that are allocated at the tenant level while other data structures can be managed at the user level. Because an MTS can support multiple tenants including possible competitors, the MTS can have security protocols that keep data, applications, and application use separate. Also, because many tenants may opt for access to an MTS rather than maintain their own system, redundancy, up-time, and backup are additional functions that can be implemented in the MTS. In addition to user-specific data and tenant-specific data, the system 16 also can maintain system level data usable by multiple tenants or other data. Such system level data can include industry reports, news, postings, and the like that are sharable among tenants.

In some implementations, the user systems 12 (which also can be client systems) communicate with the application servers 100 to request and update system-level and tenant-level data from the system 16. Such requests and updates can involve sending one or more queries to tenant DB 22 or system DB 24. The system 16 (e.g., an application server 100 in the system 16) can automatically generate one or more native queries (e.g., SQL statements or SQL queries or the like) designed to access the desired information from a suitable DB. To do so, the system 16 (e.g., an application server 100 in the system 16) may include one or more query engines 103, which is/are a software engine, SDK, object(s), program code and/or software modules, or other like logical unit that takes a description of a search request (e.g., a user query), processes/evaluates the search request, executes the search request, and returns the results back to the calling party. The query engine(s) 103 may be program code that obtains a query from a suitable request message via the network interface 20 that calls a public API, translates or converts the query into a native query (if necessary), evaluates and executes the native query, and returns results of the query back to the issuing party (e.g., a user system 12). To perform these functions, the query engine(s) 103 include a parser, a query optimizer, DB manager, compiler, execution engine, and/or other like components. In some implementations, each of the illustrated DBs may generate query plans to access the requested data from that DB, for example, the system DB 24 can generate query plans to access the requested data from the system DB 24. The term “query plan” generally refers to one or more operations used to access information in a DB system.

The query engine(s) 103 may include any suitable query engine technology or combinations thereof. As examples, the query engine(s) 103 may include direct (e.g., SQL) execution engines (e.g., Presto SQL query engine, MySQL engine, SOQL execution engine, Apache® Phoenix® engine, etc.), a key-value datastore or NoSQL DB engines (e.g., DynamoDB® provided by Amazon.com®, MongoDB query framework provided by MongoDB Apache® Cassandra, Redis™ provided by Redis Labs®, etc.), MapReduce query engines (e.g., Apache® Hive™, Apache® Impala™ Apache® HAWQ™, IBM® Db2 Big SQL®, etc. for Apache® Hadoop® DB systems, etc.), relational DB (or “NewSQL”) engines (e.g., InnoDB™ or MySQL Cluster™ developed by Oracle®, MyRocks™ developed by Facebook.com®, FaunaDB provided by Fauna Inc.), PostgreSQL DB engines (e.g., MicroKernel DB Engine and Relational DB Engine provided by Pervasive Software®), graph processing engines (e.g., GraphX of an Apache® Spark® engine, an Apache® Tez engine, Neo4J provided by Neo4j, Inc.™, etc.), pull (iteration pattern) query engines, push (visitor pattern) query engines, transactional DB engines, extensible query execution engines, package query language (PaQL) execution engines, LegoBase query execution engines, and/or some other query engine used to query some other type of DB system (such as any processing engine or execution technology discussed herein). In some implementations, the query engine(s) 103 may include or implement an in-memory caching system and/or an in-memory caching engine (e.g., memcached, Redis, etc.) to store frequently accessed data items in a main memory of the system 16 for later retrieval without additional access to the persistent data store. In various embodiments, the query engine 103 may control or enforce the order in which transactions are processed. In these embodiments, order in which transactions are executed may be based on an MDM consistent state, which as discussed in more detail infra, is used to ensure consistency and synchronization for MDM services provided by an MDM system (e.g., MDM system 304 of FIG. 3). In alternative embodiments, the MDM consistent state may be enforced by the judgment processor(s) 106. These and other aspects are discussed in more detail infra.

Each DB can generally be viewed as a collection of objects, such as a set of logical tables, containing data fitted into predefined or customizable categories. As used herein, a “database object”, “data object”, or the like may refer to any representation of information in a DB that is in the form of an object or tuple, and may include variables, data structures, functions, methods, classes, DB records, DB fields, DB entities, associations between data and DB entities (also referred to as a “relation”), and the like. A “table” is one representation of a data object, and may be used herein to simplify the conceptual description of objects and custom objects according to some implementations. It should be understood that “table” and “data(base) object” may be used interchangeably herein. Each table generally contains one or more data categories logically arranged as columns or fields in a viewable schema. Each row or element of a table can contain an instance of data for each category defined by the fields. For example, a CRM DB can include a table that describes a customer with fields for basic contact information such as name, address, phone number, fax number, etc. Another table can describe a purchase order, including fields for information such as customer, product, sale price, date, etc. In some MTS implementations, standard entity tables can be provided for use by all tenants. For CRM DB applications, such standard entities can include tables for case, account, contact, lead, and opportunity data objects, each containing pre-defined fields. As used herein, the term “entity” also may be used interchangeably with “object” and “table.”

In some MTS implementations, tenants are allowed to create and store custom objects, or may be allowed to customize standard entities or objects, for example by creating custom fields for standard objects, including custom index fields. Commonly assigned U.S. Pat. No. 7,779,039, titled CUSTOM ENTITIES AND FIELDS IN A MULTI-TENANT DATABASE SYSTEM, by Weissman et al., issued on Aug. 17, 2010, and hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety and for all purposes, teaches systems and methods for creating custom objects as well as customizing standard objects in a multi-tenant DB system. In some implementations, for example, all custom entity data rows are stored in a single multi-tenant physical table, which may contain multiple logical tables per organization. It is transparent to customers that their multiple “tables” are in fact stored in one large table or that their data may be stored in the same table as the data of other customers.

Referring now to the user system 12 in FIG. 1B, the user system 12 includes a processor system 12A, which can include any suitable combination of one or more processors, such as one or more central processing units (CPUs) including single-core or multi-core processors (such as those discussed herein), graphics processing units (GPUs), reduced instruction set computing (RISC) processors, Acorn RISC Machine (ARM) processors, complex instruction set computing (CISC) processors, digital signal processors (DSP), programmable logic devices (PLDs), field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), Application Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs), System-on-Chips (SoCs) and/or programmable SoCs, microprocessors or controllers, or any other electronic circuitry capable of executing program code and/or software modules to perform arithmetic, logical, and/or input/output operations, or any suitable combination thereof. As examples, the processor system 12A may include Intel® Pentium® or Core™ based processor(s); AMD Zen® Core Architecture processor(s), such as Ryzen® processor(s) or Accelerated Processing Units (APUs), MxGPUs, or the like; A, S, W, and T series processor(s) from Apple® Inc.; Snapdragon™ processor(s) from Qualcomm® Technologies, Inc., Texas Instruments, Inc.® Open Multimedia Applications Platform (OMAP)™ processor(s); MIPS Warrior M-class, Warrior I-class, and Warrior P-class processor(s) provided by MIPS Technologies, Inc.; ARM Cortex-A, Cortex-R, and Cortex-M family of processor(s) as licensed from ARM Holdings, Ltd.; GeForce®, Tegra®, Titan X®, Tesla®, Shield®, and/or other like GPUs provided by Nvidia®; and/or the like.

The memory system 12B can include any suitable combination of one or more memory devices, such as volatile storage devices (e.g., random access memory (RAM), dynamic RAM (DRAM), etc.) and non-volatile memory device (e.g., read only memory (ROM), flash memory, etc.). The memory system 12B may store program code for various applications (e.g., application 12 y and/or other applications discussed herein) for carrying out the procedures, processes, methods, etc. of the embodiments discussed herein, as well as an operating system (OS) 12 x and one or more DBs or DBOs (not shown).

The OS 12 x manages hardware and software resources of the user system 12, and provides common services for the applications via one or more drivers and/or APIs that provide an interface to hardware devices thereby enabling the OS 12 x and applications to access hardware functions. The OS 12 x or some other code stored in memory system 12B may include middleware that connects two or more separate applications or connects applications with underlying hardware components beyond those available from OS 12 x and/or the drivers/APIs. The OS 12 x may be a general-purpose operating system or an operating system specifically written for/tailored to the user system 12.

The application(s) 12 y is/are a software application designed to run on the user system 12 and is used to access data stored by the DB system 16. The application 12 y may be platform-specific, such as when the user system 12 is implemented in a mobile device, such as a smartphone, tablet computer, and the like. The application 12 y may be a native application, a web application, or a hybrid application (or variants thereof). The application 12 y may be developed using any suitable programming language and/or development tools such as any of those discussed herein. In some implementations, the application 12 y may be developed using platform-specific development tools and/or programming languages such as those discussed herein. Suitable implementations for the OS 12 x, DBs, and applications 210, as well as the general functionality of the user system 12 are known or commercially available, and are readily implemented by persons having ordinary skill in the art, particularly in light of the disclosure herein.

The input system 12C can include any suitable combination of input devices, such as one or more touchscreen interfaces, keyboards, mice, trackballs, scanners, cameras, or interfaces to networks. The output system 12D can include any suitable combination of output devices, such as one or more display devices, printers, or interfaces to networks. The output system 12D is used to display visual representations and/or GUIs 12 v based on various user interactions.

The communications system 12E may include circuitry for communicating with a wireless network or wired network. Communications system 12E may be used to establish a link 15 (also referred to as “channel 15,” ‘networking layer tunnel 15,” and the like) through which the user system 12 may communicate with the DB system 16. Communications system 12E may include one or more processors (e.g., baseband processors, network interface controllers, etc.) that are dedicated to a particular wireless communication protocol (e.g., WiFi and/or IEEE 802.11 protocols), a cellular communication protocol (e.g., Long Term Evolution (LTE) and the like), a wireless personal area network (WPAN) protocol (e.g., IEEE 802.15.4-802.15.5 protocols, Bluetooth or Bluetooth low energy (BLE), etc.), and/or a wired communication protocol (e.g., Ethernet, Fiber Distributed Data Interface (FDDI), Point-to-Point (PPP), etc.). The communications system 12E may also include hardware devices that enable communication with wireless/wired networks and/or other user systems 12 using modulated electromagnetic radiation through a solid or non-solid medium. Such hardware devices may include switches; filters; amplifiers; antenna elements; wires, ports/receptacles/jacks/sockets, and plugs; and the like to facilitate the communications over the air or through a wire by generating or otherwise producing radio waves to transmit data to one or more other devices, and converting received signals into usable information, such as digital data, which may be provided to one or more other components of user system 12. To communicate (e.g., transmit/receive) with the DB system 16, the user system 12 using the communications system 12E may establish link 15 with network interface 20 of the DB system 16.

FIG. 2A shows a system diagram illustrating example architectural components of an on-demand DB service environment 200 according to some implementations. A client machine communicably connected with the cloud 204, generally referring to one or more networks in combination, as described herein, can communicate with the on-demand DB service environment 200 via one or more edge routers 208 and 212. A client machine can be any of the examples of user systems 12 described above. The edge routers can communicate with one or more core switches 220 and 224 through a firewall 216. The core switches can communicate with a load balancer 228, which can distribute server load over different pods, such as the pods 240 and 244. The pods 240 and 244, which can each include one or more servers or other computing resources, can perform data processing and other operations used to provide on-demand services. Communication with the pods can be conducted via pod switches 232 and 236. Components of the on-demand DB service environment can communicate with DB storage 256 through a DB firewall 248 and a DB switch 252.

As shown in FIGS. 2A and 2B, accessing an on-demand DB service environment can involve communications transmitted among a variety of different hardware or software components. Further, the on-demand DB service environment 200 is a simplified representation of an actual on-demand DB service environment. For example, while only one or two devices of each type are shown in FIGS. 2A and 2B, some implementations of an on-demand DB service environment can include anywhere from one to several devices of each type. Also, the on-demand DB service environment need not include each device shown in FIGS. 2A and 2B, or can include additional devices not shown in FIGS. 2A and 2B. One or more of the devices in the on-demand DB service environment 200 can be implemented on the same physical device or on different hardware. Some devices can be implemented using hardware or a combination of hardware and software. Thus, terms such as “data processing apparatus,” “machine,” “server” and “device” as used herein are not limited to a single hardware device, rather references to these terms can include any suitable combination of hardware and software configured to provide the described functionality.

The cloud 204 refers to a data network or multiple data networks, often including the Internet. Client machines communicably connected with the cloud 204 can communicate with other components of the on-demand DB service environment 200 to access services provided by the on-demand DB service environment. For example, client machines can access the on-demand DB service environment to retrieve, store, edit, or process information. In some implementations, the edge routers 208 and 212 route packets between the cloud 204 and other components of the on-demand DB service environment 200. For example, the edge routers 208 and 212 can employ the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP). The BGP is the core routing protocol of the Internet. The edge routers 208 and 212 can maintain a table of IP networks or ‘prefixes’, which designate network reachability among autonomous systems on the Internet.

In some implementations, the firewall 216 can protect the inner components of the on-demand DB service environment 200 from Internet traffic. In some embodiments, firewall 216 may be an active firewall. The firewall 216 can block, permit, or deny access to the inner components of the on-demand DB service environment 200 based upon a set of rules and other criteria (e.g., the policies 35 discussed previously). The firewall 216 can act as, or implement one or more of a packet filter, an application gateway, a stateful filter, a proxy server, virtual private networking (VPN), network access controller (NAC), host-based firewall, unified threat management (UTM) system, a Predictive Intelligence (PI) and/or FaaS, and/or any other type of firewall technology.

In some implementations, the core switches 220 and 224 are high-capacity switches that transfer packets within the on-demand DB service environment 200. The core switches 220 and 224 can be configured as network bridges that quickly route data between different components within the on-demand DB service environment. In some implementations, the use of two or more core switches 220 and 224 can provide redundancy or reduced latency.

In some implementations, the pods 240 and 244 perform the core data processing and service functions provided by the on-demand DB service environment. Each pod can include various types of hardware or software computing resources. An example of the pod architecture is discussed in greater detail with reference to FIG. 2B. In some implementations, communication between the pods 240 and 244 is conducted via the pod switches 232 and 236. The pod switches 232 and 236 can facilitate communication between the pods 240 and 244 and client machines communicably connected with the cloud 204, for example via core switches 220 and 224. Also, the pod switches 232 and 236 may facilitate communication between the pods 240 and 244 and the DB storage 256. In some implementations, the load balancer 228 can distribute workload between the pods 240 and 244. Balancing the on-demand service requests between the pods can assist in improving the use of resources, increasing throughput, reducing response times, or reducing overhead. The load balancer 228 may include multilayer switches to analyze and forward traffic.

In some implementations, access to the DB storage 256 is guarded by a DB firewall 248. In some implementations, the DB firewall 248 is an active firewall. Additionally, the firewall 248 may be equipped with the group optimization technologies discussed herein. The DB firewall 248 can act as a computer application firewall operating at the DB application layer of a protocol stack. The DB firewall 248 can protect the DB storage 256 from application attacks such as structure query language (SQL) injection, DB rootkits, and unauthorized information disclosure. In some implementations, the DB firewall 248 includes a host using one or more forms of reverse proxy services to proxy traffic before passing it to a gateway router. The DB firewall 248 can inspect the contents of DB traffic and block certain content or DB requests. The DB firewall 248 can work on the SQL application level atop the TCP/IP stack, managing applications' connection to the DB or SQL management interfaces as well as intercepting and enforcing packets traveling to or from a DB network or application interface.

In some implementations, communication with the DB storage 256 is conducted via the DB switch 252. The multi-tenant DB storage 256 can include more than one hardware or software components for handling DB queries. Accordingly, the DB switch 252 can direct DB queries transmitted by other components of the on-demand DB service environment (for example, the pods 240 and 244) to the correct components within the DB storage 256. In some implementations, the DB storage 256 is an on-demand DB system shared by many different organizations as described above with reference to FIGS. 1A and 1B.

FIG. 2B shows a system diagram further illustrating example architectural components of an on-demand DB service environment according to some implementations. The pod 244 can be used to render services to a user of the on-demand DB service environment 200. In some implementations, each pod includes a variety of servers or other systems. The pod 244 includes one or more content batch servers 264, content search servers 268, query servers 282, file (force) servers 286, access control system (ACS) servers 280, batch servers 284, and app servers 288. The pod 244 also can include DB instances 290, quick file systems (QFS) 292, and indexers 294. In some implementations, some or all communication between the servers in the pod 244 can be transmitted via the switch 236.

In some implementations, the app servers 288 include a hardware or software framework dedicated to the execution of procedures (e.g., programs, routines, scripts, etc.) for supporting the construction of applications provided by the on-demand DB service environment 200 via the pod 244. In some implementations, the hardware or software framework of an app server 288 is configured to execute operations of the services described herein, including performance of the blocks of various methods or processes described herein. In some alternative implementations, two or more app servers 288 can be included and cooperate to perform such methods, or one or more other servers described herein can be configured to perform the disclosed methods. In various implementations, the app servers 288 may be the same or similar to the app servers 100 discussed with respect to FIGS. 1A-1B.

The content batch servers 264 can handle requests internal to the pod. Some such requests can be long-running or not tied to a particular customer. For example, the content batch servers 264 can handle requests related to log mining, cleanup work, and maintenance tasks. The content search servers 268 can provide query and indexer functions. For example, the functions provided by the content search servers 268 can allow users to search through content stored in the on-demand DB service environment. The file servers 286 can manage requests for information stored in the file storage 298. The file storage 298 can store information such as documents, images, and basic large objects (BLOBs). By managing requests for information using the file force servers 286, the image footprint on the DB can be reduced. The query servers 282 can be used to retrieve information from one or more file systems. For example, the query system 282 can receive requests for information from the app servers 288 and transmit information queries to the NFS 296 located outside the pod.

The pod 244 can share a DB instance 290 configured as a multi-tenant environment in which different organizations share access to the same DB. Additionally, services rendered by the pod 244 may call upon various hardware or software resources. In some implementations, the ACS servers 280 control access to data, hardware resources, or software resources. In some implementations, the batch servers 284 process batch jobs, which are used to run tasks at specified times. For example, the batch servers 284 can transmit instructions to other servers, such as the app servers 288, to trigger the batch jobs.

In some implementations, a QFS 292 is an open source file system available from Sun Microsystems® of Santa Clara, Calif. The QFS can serve as a rapid-access file system for storing and accessing information available within the pod 244. The QFS 292 can support some volume management capabilities, allowing many disks to be grouped together into a file system. File system metadata can be kept on a separate set of disks, which can be useful for streaming applications where long disk seeks cannot be tolerated. Thus, the QFS system can communicate with one or more content search servers 268 or indexers 294 to identify, retrieve, move, or update data stored in the network file systems (NFS) 296 or other storage systems.

In some implementations, one or more query servers 282 communicate with the NFS 296 to retrieve or update information stored outside of the pod 244. The NFS 296 can allow servers located in the pod 244 to access information to access files over a network in a manner similar to how local storage is accessed. In some implementations, queries from the query servers 282 are transmitted to the NFS 296 via the load balancer 228, which can distribute resource requests over various resources available in the on-demand DB service environment. The NFS 296 also can communicate with the QFS 292 to update the information stored on the NFS 296 or to provide information to the QFS 292 for use by servers located within the pod 244.

In some implementations, the pod includes one or more DB instances 290. The DB instance 290 can transmit information to the QFS 292. When information is transmitted to the QFS, it can be available for use by servers within the pod 244 without using an additional DB call. In some implementations, DB information is transmitted to the indexer 294. Indexer 294 can provide an index of information available in the DB 290 or QFS 292. The index information can be provided to file force servers 286 or the QFS 292.

II. APPLICATION PROGRAMMER INTERFACE PLATFORM WITH DIRECT DATA CENTER ACCESS

FIG. 3 shows an example cloud based computing system 300 that uses an API platform with tenant specific data center access. Tenants 302A, 302B, and 302C may alternatively be referred to as accounts or customer accounts and may operate similarly to the tenants referred to above in FIGS. 1A-1B and 2A-2B. Users 305 associated with tenants 302 may access different cloud-base software services 310 through client applications 304. Client software applications 304 may alternatively be referred to as clients or partner software applications.

Cloud-based computing system 300 may operate multiple different data centers 312A, 312B, and 312C that each include different database systems and application server systems as described above in FIGS. 1A-1B and/or 2A-2B. Cloud computing system 300 may locate tenants 302A-302C and software services 310 in different data centers 312 located in different physical locations.

For explanation purposes, users 305 and client applications 304 are shown in FIG. 3 accessing particular software services 310, data centers 312, and tenants 302. However, it should be understood that any combination of users and client applications 304 may access any combination of cloud services 310 and tenants 302 on any data center 312.

In one example, client applications 304 operate externally from the cloud computing system 300 and use API requests 306 to access cloud-based software services 310 and related tenant data 302 stored in data centers 312. API requests 306 may use tenant specific endpoints (TSEs) 320 to access software services 310 and tenant data 302 in tenant specific data centers 312. TSEs 320 may include a tenant specific key 322 and an API endpoint 324. Tenant specific key 326 is alternatively referred to as a unique tenant identifier and API endpoint 324 may refer to a software service 310.

TSE 320 causes API request 306 to be routed over Internet 308 directly to a specific data center 312 associated with a particular tenant 302. For example, client application 304A may send an API request 306A_1 for an API authentication token. TSE 320A_1 maps to an IP address assigned to an API authorization service 310A_1 operating in a specific data center 312A assigned to tenant 302A. Accordingly, API request 306A_1 is routed directly over Internet 308 to API authorization service 310A_1 that authenticates client application 304A for accessing other software services 310A prior to sending back an authentication token.

Client application 304A is then authorized to send other API requests 306, along with the received token, to other software services 310 in tenant specific data center 312A. For example, API request 306A_2 may include TSE 320A_2 that maps to an IP address assigned to cloud-based service 310A_2 operating in tenant specific data center 312A. Cloud-based service 310A_2 receives API request 306A_2, validates the token, and then executes a command in API request 306A_2.

An example API used in cloud computing system 300 may include the Restful API and may use authentication and validation services such as OAuth2.0. In one example, API endpoints 320 may include auth.exacttargetapis.com and rest.exacttargetapis.com provided in the Salesforce.com® software development kit (SDK). However, it should be understood that any API protocol and/or API authentication service may be used.

Client application 304B uses tenant specific endpoints (TSEs) 320B to send API requests 306B on behalf of tenant 302B. TSEs 320B may include a unique tenant specific key 322B assigned to tenant 302B. Client application 304C uses tenant specific endpoints (TSEs) 320C to send API requests 306C on behalf of tenant 302C. TSEs 320C may include a unique tenant specific key 322C assigned to tenant 302C. Tenant specific key 322B causes Internet 308 to route API requests 306B directly to software services 310B in data center 312B assigned to tenant 302B. Tenant specific keys 322C cause Internet 308 to also route API requests 306C directly to software services 310C in data center 312C assigned to tenant 302C.

Tenants 302 may be globally distributed across different data centers 312 in different physical locations around the world. Client applications 304 may not know where data for different tenants 302 is stored in cloud computing system 300. Cloud computing system 300 may assign separate IP addresses to each data center 312A-312C and each software service 310 within in each data center 312. TSEs 320 point to these IP addresses allowing client applications 304 to access the tenant specific data centers 312 and related software services 310 where tenant data 302 is located.

As mentioned above, using TSE 320 improves network performance by eliminating a central routing service from having to parse and redirect API requests to different specific data centers. Reliability is also improved by eliminating the single point of failure at the central routing service. Scalability is increased and maintenance costs are also reduced since API authentication data no longer has to be replicated at each data center 312. Data center processing is also reduced since the data centers no longer need the additional parsing required for redirected API requests.

FIG. 4 shows example tenant specific API requests 306 in more detail. TSE 320A in API request 306A includes a universal resource locator (URL) 326 that uses a hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP). The URL 326 may include a domain 328 and a path 330. Domain 328 maps to a record in a domain name service (DNS) server (not shown) that resolves to an associated IP address. Path 330 refers to a cloud-based software service, software service command, and/or tenant data. In this example, path 330 references an email software service and includes a command for sending an email from the referenced email software service.

Domain 328 includes a top-level domain (.com), a parent domain that includes API endpoint 324A (exacttargetapis), and a subdomain that includes unique tenant identifier 322A (mc12345). Unique tenant identifier 322A and API endpoint 324A are provided to client application 304A by cloud computing system 300. Unique tenant identifier 322A in combination with API endpoint 324A uniquely map API request 306A to an IP address 322A assigned to software service 310A in tenant specific data center 312A. TSE 320A causes API request 306A to route directly to data center 312A without redirection through a central routing gateway or CDN.

Unique tenant identifier 322B and API endpoint 324B are provided to client application 304B in FIG. 3 by cloud computing system 300. Unique tenant identifier 322B in combination with API endpoint 324B uniquely map API request 306B to an IP address 322B assigned to software service 310B in tenant specific data center 312B. TSE 320B causes API request 306B to route directly to data center 312B without redirection through the central routing gateway or CDN.

FIG. 5 shows example API requests that do not include tenant specific endpoints. A first API request 334A includes a URL 342 with a domain 336 and path 338. A tenant identifier 340A for a first tenant is located in path 338 and not in domain 336. Domain 336 maps to an IP address 344 assigned to a global routing and/or authentication service 346.

A second API request 334B includes a second different tenant identifier 340B for a second different tenant and is located in path 338 of URL 342 and not in domain 336. The same API endpoint 343 is used in domain 336 of API request 334A and API request 334B. Both API requests 334A and 334B are therefore routed to the same IP address 344 for global non-tenant specific routing and/or authentication services 346.

Global services 346 perform additional processing to redirect API requests 334A and 334B to the correct data centers associated with tenant identifiers 340A and 340B, respectively. Global services 346 also may perform global authentication services for API requests 334A and 334B and therefore may need to replicate client authentication credentials at each data center in the cloud computing system.

FIG. 6 shows example operations performed by a client application that sends API requests on behalf of a tenant. In operation 350A, a client API integration is created for receiving client application credentials and a tenant specific authorization endpoint. The client credentials and tenant specific authorization endpoint may be obtained from a software development kit (SDK) supporting the cloud computing system. The client credentials are similar to a user name and password and provide a unique identifier such as a random key that indicates client application 304 has authorization to access a particular tenant account.

In operation 350B, the client application uses the client credentials to request a valid token from the tenant specific authorization endpoint. The client application sends the API authorization request over the Internet to the IP address associated with the authorization service at the tenant specific data center. As explained above, the unique tenant identifier in the domain in the tenant specific endpoint maps to a DNS record that resolves to the IP address of the authorization service at the tenant specific data center.

In operation 350C, the client application receives a validated token back from the authorization service. The token ensures the client application credentials can be used for accessing other software services at the tenant specific data center. Providing separate API authentication services at each tenant specific data center may provide more granular control for rate limiting API endpoints.

In operation 350D, the client application builds another API request with the validated token. For example, the client application may build an API request to send an email from a cloud-based email service. As described above, the API request includes a second tenant specific endpoint that includes the same unique tenant identifier but includes an API endpoint and commands for the cloud-based email service. In one example, Restful API may be used in these API requests.

In operation 350E, the client application sends the second API request. The TSE in the second API request points to a second tenant specific DNS record that resolves to a second IP address assigned to a cloud-based email service at the same tenant specific data center. In operation 350F, the client application receives results, if any, back from the software service referenced in the second API request. For example, the client application may receive an email back from the cloud-based email service.

FIG. 7 describes in more detail the API operations performed by the tenant specific data centers. In operation 360A, the authorization service in the tenant specific data center receives the API token request and the client credentials from the client application.

In operation 360B, the authentication service performs confirms the client credentials can be used with the identified tenant specific endpoint. Once the client credentials are authenticated, the authentication service in operation 360C sends a validated client token back to the client application.

In operation 360D, another software service in the tenant specific data center receives another API request that includes the client token. For example, the cloud-based email service may receive the second API request and token from the client application. In operation 360E, the client token is used to authenticate the client application is authorized to use the cloud-based email service.

In operation 360F, the software service in the tenant specific data center processes the command in the API request. For example, the API request may direct the software service to send an email. In operation 360G, the software service sends results of the API request, if any, back to the client application.

The API platform allows client applications to interact with data centers on behalf of tenants without using a content delivery network (CDN) or central gateway. The API platform facilitates discovery of tenant specific information in the middle of authorize code flow so API authorization and authentication interactions occur against the tenant specific endpoint and data center of the end user.

API routing is handled via domain name service (DNS) entries. Therefore, all routing goes straight to the appropriate data center and eliminates the additional decryption and buffering needed for inspecting endpoint paths in API requests. This reduces overhead, improves performance, and allows for greater flexibility when using, or not using, CDNs and gateways. If a tenant is moved to a different data center, the cloud computing system simply updates a DNS entry for that tenant to point to the new data center. The TSE approach described above allows data centers to operate more independently and reduces the intra-data center communications previously needed for API authentication.

The specific details of the specific aspects of implementations disclosed herein may be combined in any suitable manner without departing from the spirit and scope of the disclosed implementations. However, other implementations may be directed to specific implementations relating to each individual aspect, or specific combinations of these individual aspects. Additionally, while the disclosed examples are often described herein with reference to an implementation in which an on-demand database service environment is implemented in a system having an application server providing a front end for an on-demand database service capable of supporting multiple tenants, the present implementations are not limited to multi-tenant databases or deployment on application servers. Implementations may be practiced using other database architectures, for example, ORACLE®, DB2® by IBM®, and the like without departing from the scope of the implementations claimed.

It should also be understood that some of the disclosed implementations can be embodied in the form of various types of hardware, software, firmware, middleware, or combinations thereof, including in the form of control logic, and using such hardware or software in a modular or integrated manner. Other ways or methods are possible using hardware and a combination of hardware and software. Additionally, any of the software components or functions described in this application can be implemented as software code to be executed by one or more processors using any suitable computer language such as, for example, Python, PyTorch, NumPy, Ruby, Ruby on Rails, Scala, Smalltalk, Java™, C++, C#, “C”, Rust, Go (or “Golang”), JavaScript, Server-Side JavaScript (SSJS), PHP, Pearl, Lua, Torch/Lua with Just-In Time compiler (LuaJIT), Accelerated Mobile Pages Script (AMPscript), VBScript, JavaServer Pages (JSP), Active Server Pages (ASP), Node.js, ASP.NET, JAMscript, Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), Extensible Markup Language (XML), wiki markup or Wikitext, Wireless Markup Language (WML), Java Script Object Notion (JSON), Apache® MessagePack™, Cascading Stylesheets (CSS), extensible stylesheet language (XSL), Mustache template language, Handlebars template language, Guide Template Language (GTL), Apache® Thrift, Abstract Syntax Notation One (ASN.1), Google® Protocol Buffers (protobuf), Salesforce® Apex®, Salesforce® Visualforce®, Salesforce® Lightning®, Salesforce® Wave™ Dashboard Designer, Salesforce® Force.com® IDE, Android® Studio™ integrated development environment (IDE), Apple® iOS® software development kit (SDK), and/or any other programming language or development tools including proprietary programming languages and/or development tools. Furthermore, some or all of the software components or functions described herein can utilize a suitable querying language to query and store information in one or more databases or data structures, such as, for example, Structure Query Language (SQL), object query language (OQL), Salesforce® OQL (SOQL), Salesforce® object search language (SOSL), Salesforce® analytics query language (SAQL), and/or other query languages. The software code can be stored as a computer- or processor-executable instructions or commands on a physical non-transitory computer-readable medium. Examples of suitable media include random access memory (RAM), read only memory (ROM), magnetic media such as a hard-drive or a floppy disk, or an optical medium such as a compact disk (CD) or DVD (digital versatile disk), flash memory, and the like, or any combination of such storage or transmission devices.

Computer-readable media encoded with the software/program code may be packaged with a compatible device or provided separately from other devices (e.g., via Internet download). Any such computer-readable medium may reside on or within a single computing device or an entire computer system, and may be among other computer-readable media within a system or network. A computer system, or other computing device, includes a monitor, printer, or other suitable display for providing any of the results mentioned herein to a user.

While some implementations have been described herein, it should be understood that they have been presented by way of example only, and not limitation. Thus, the breadth and scope of the present application should not be limited by any of the implementations described herein, but should be defined only in accordance with the following and later-submitted claims and their equivalents. 

1. One or more non-transitory computer-readable media (NTCRM) comprising instructions to provide an application programming interface (API) platform in a cloud computing system, wherein execution of the instructions is configurable to cause a computing system to: receive an API request sent from a client application on behalf of a tenant, wherein: the API request includes a tenant specific endpoint (TSE); the TSE includes a domain and a path; the path includes a command directed to a software service; and the domain of the TSE identifier includes a unique tenant identifier and an API endpoint for the software service in the cloud computing system; map the combination of the unique tenant identifier and the API endpoint in the domain of the TSE to an IP address; and route the API request to the software service in the tenant specific data center in the cloud computing system assigned to the tenant.
 2. The one or more NTCRM of claim 1, wherein the combination of the unique tenant identifier and the API endpoint map to a DNS record that resolves to the IP address of the software service in the tenant specific data center.
 3. The one or more NTCRM of claim 1, wherein the API endpoint maps the API request to an API authorization service in the tenant specific data center that returns a token to the client application.
 4. The one or more NTCRM of claim 1, wherein the API endpoint maps the API request to an API authentication service in the tenant specific data center that authenticates access to the software service.
 5. The one or more NTCRM of claim 1, wherein, the path of the TSE includes a command directed to the software service or accesses data in the tenant specific data center for the tenant.
 6. The one or more NTCRM of claim 1, wherein execution of the instructions are further configured to cause the computing system to: receive a first API request for a client token, wherein the first API request includes client application credentials, the unique tenant identifier, and a first API endpoint for an API authorization service in the tenant specific data center; send the token back from the API authorization service; and receive a second API request to access the software service, wherein the second API request includes the token, the unique tenant identifier, and an API endpoint for authenticating the token and accessing the software service.
 7. The one or more NTCRM of claim 1, wherein during a code integration the client application is sent the unique tenant identifier and the API endpoint from a software development kit (SDK) for the cloud computing system.
 8. The one or more NTCRM of claim 1, wherein execution of the instructions are further configured to cause the computing system to: receive API requests from different client applications on behalf of different tenants, the API requests requesting access to different software services in different data centers in the cloud computing system, wherein: the different API requests each include a TSE that includes a unique tenant identifier for an associated one of the tenants and an API endpoint for a software service in one of the data centers containing the associated one of the tenants; and the unique tenant identifier and the API endpoint form the domain of the TSE so that the API requests are routed over the Internet to tenant specific data centers in the cloud computing system containing the associated tenants.
 9. The one or more NTCRM of claim 8, wherein the API requests are routed to the tenant specific data centers without being routed through a central routing service.
 10. The one or more NTCRM of claim 1, wherein the tenant comprises a customer account.
 11. A cloud-based computing system, comprising: multiple data centers each operating associated cloud-based software services accessible through API requests, wherein the data centers are configured to: receive the API requests from client applications on behalf of associated accounts, wherein the API requests each include an account specific endpoint (ASE); and a domain of the ASE includes a unique account identifier and an API endpoint directed to one of the software services; map the combination of the unique tenant identifier and the API endpoint in the domain of the ASE to an IP address; and route the API request to the IP address for a specific one of the software services in a specific one of the data centers containing the associated account.
 12. The cloud-based computing system of claim 11, wherein the combination of the unique account identifier and the API endpoint map to a DNS record that resolves to the IP address of the specific one of the software services.
 13. The cloud-based computing system of claim 11, wherein a first one of the software services comprises an API authorization service configured to: receive API requests from the client applications for authentication tokens; and send the authentication tokens back to the client applications after authenticating credentials for the client applications.
 14. The cloud-based computing system of claim 13, a second one of the software services is configured to use the authentication tokens to verify the client applications have authorization to access the software services in the data centers.
 15. The cloud-based computing system of claim 11, wherein a software development kit (SDK) provides the unique account identifier and the API endpoint to the client applications sending the API requests.
 16. The cloud-based computing system of claim 11, wherein the API requests are routed to the specific data centers associated with the accounts without being routed through a central routing service.
 17. A method for operating an application programming interface (API) platform for accessing cloud-based software services in a cloud computing system, the method comprising: creating an API request with a client application, the API request including a tenant specific endpoint (TSE); using a unique tenant identifier and an API endpoint as a domain for the TSE, wherein the unique tenant identifier identifies a tenant associated with the API request and the API endpoint identifies a specified one of the software services; and sending the API request with the client application on behalf of the tenant, wherein the unique tenant identifier and the API endpoint in the domain of the TSE routes the API request to an IP address for the specified one of the software services in a specific data center in the cloud computing system assigned to the tenant.
 18. The method of claim 17, wherein the combination of the unique tenant identifier and the API endpoint map to a DNS record that resolves to the IP address of the specified one of the software services in the specific data center assigned to the tenant.
 19. The method of claim 17, further comprising: sending a first API request for a client token, wherein the first API request includes credentials for the client application, the unique tenant identifier, and a first API endpoint for a first one of the software services that provides a client token; receive the client token back from the first one of the software services; and sending a second API request to access a second one of the software services, wherein the second API request includes the token, the unique tenant identifier, and a second API endpoint for the second one of the software services.
 20. The method of claim 17, wherein the TSE causes the API request to be routed directly to the data center in the cloud computing system assigned to the tenant without going through a central routing service. 